I’m a night owl, and my husband is an early bird. Very often, I’m coming to bed just as he’s getting up. This morning, we sat and talked for about two hours as I wound down from my day and he geared up for his. I kept trying to shut up and go to sleep, but it was just so fun to talk to him without any interruptions that I’m afraid I stayed up a lot longer than I should have. When I finally rolled over to drift off to sleep, I said, “I’m so glad we still find each other fascinating after fifteen years.”
I married my husband in the first place because he was so interesting. We had never met anyone quite like each other, and found our dating relationship a breath of fresh air. We do go through moments of stagnation where we take each other for granted and don’t communicate as much as we should, but then we return to each other like long-lost best friends and sit and talk for hours, like this morning.
I think there are two keys to this – first, we have wide and varied interests. We’re both very curious people and we read and look things up. I have fields of pursuit that don’t necessarily involve him, as does he. Second, we enjoy sharing what we’ve learned and experienced with each other, and we’re genuinely interested in hearing what the other has to say. I should make a clarification here—it’s not that I’m totally dying to hear what my husband learned that day about the benefits of mushrooms, and it’s not that he deeply cares about the edit I’m doing or the way the comma really should have been in a different place in the sentence. The key is that we’re interested in each other, and so we listen to each other because we want to know how the other person is doing. I’m sure I bore my husband silly sometimes, but he listens because he loves me, and he wants to know how my day was because he cares about my wellbeing.
So, what is the real key to staying fascinated with your spouse? Concentrate on loving them. Loving is the bottom line in any relationship, and you add to that a healthy dose of compassion, forgiveness, and the genuine desire to communicate, and after fifteen years or fifty, you will still be able to find fascinating things about your spouse.
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